In the Past

Like I said, we've been farming for 4 years now. We've learned alot and changed alot of things over the years. Here are some pictures from April, 2007. I will be out this week taking current ones, but it will give you an idea of what goes into producing the worm castings.

This first pictures is my husband, Chuck and our youngest daughter, Shayla, mixing the worm bedding. They had to mix the shredded newspaper, grass clippings and, manure with water before adding it to the worm bed.

We transformed our 2 car garage into a worm shed. We set up these beds for our worms and the garage is heated in the winter and air conditioned in the summer. Worms bred best at about 60-75 degrees. The bedding that Chuck and Shayla are mixing in the above picture is put into these beds and then worms are added. In 3-5 months the worms have changed the paper to poop. Each container will have about 80 lbs of castings in it at the end of the 3-5 months.

This is our son Joshua. He was 2 1/2 in this picture and he was finally not afraid to touch the worms.

This next picture is of worm capsules (eggs). This is really up close. Most capsules are the size of a nerd candy (have you seen those?) Each capsule will have between 2-20 baby worms hatch. They take 2-3 weeks to hatch. The green capsules are new, and the redish ones are getting ready to hatch.

This picture is of two worms mating. They have both sets of sex organ, so they will both lay a fertilized egg capsule.

Starting in 2007 we particpate in the annual Natural Resource Fair put on in the area. We meet with 100's of students as well as adults each year and show them how to use worms for composting. Yes, the girls say, ewww gross and the boys want to dig in and find the worms we bring.